Tai 'an Sunlight City Tan State

Yango Tan Jing in Tai'an, Shandong, is a 2,400-square-metre residential display landscape designed by DDON Planning and Design (Beijing), completed in November 2020 for Yango Shandong Tai'an Guangyao Real Estate. The site sits south of Huanshan Road and west of Tianping Lake Road, backed by Mount Tai to the north and facing Tianping Lake to the south, with strong ecological and cultural heritage. The block slopes from north to south, with good northern mountain views and wooded hills around, and the brief is to shape a refined mountain-themed landscape on a narrow frontage only 35 metres east-west wide, with roughly 2.5 metres of north-south and 4 metres of east-west level difference. The team uses that terrain as the project's chief asset, aiming on one hand to merge the landscape into the larger Mount Tai setting and on the other to stretch the arrival route and intensify the mountain experience. A looped approach path is therefore introduced, with several sculpted pines placed beside feature stones, so that light and shadow alternate and artificial traces are minimised. The design extracts Mount Tai's natural elements—mountain, water, stone, pine—and stages them through five realms: Gate, Water, Painting, Stone and Mountain. The Gate is a simple line that separates bustle from quiet, with large lanterns on either side conveying weight and ritual. The Water realm layers mountain and water, stone and pine, leading residents deeper into the mountain mood. The Painting realm frames distant ridges, winding streams and near views through doors and windows, letting visitors interact with the mountain and reflect quietly. The Stone realm passes through a stone gate into a deep, misty mountain dwelling; planted positions are minimised so that the wall reads as natural, and the 4-metre site difference is absorbed by side retaining walls, softened by planting and feature stones with zen-style broken paving. Stone steps then wind up to the sales pavilion, where a turn reveals the gate and its cascade below. The continuous peaks of Mount Tai are both the philosophical carrier of Tan Jing and the spiritual source of its mountain-dwelling life, and the project argues, through contemporary interpretation of Mount Tai's humanistic history, for a return from urban bustle to natural quiet and to the simple truth of one's own heart.